10 KEY BATTLES OF THE CIVIL WARS
NEWBURN FORD
AUGUST 1640
Between 1637 and 1640, Charles I had tried to enforce Anglican religious observances on the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland, including a new prayer book. National Scottish resistance and defiance of the King’s orders resulted in the so-called Bishops’ Wars of 1639-40 – a precursor to the Civil Wars. Parliament refused to support the King, financially or militarily, in his war with Scotland, so Charles was forced to send commander Edward Conway, 2nd Viscount Conway, to the Scottish border with only the relatively small English force he had managed to gather.
On 28 August 1640, just outside Newcastle at Newburn Ford, the King’s troops faced a 20,000-strong Scottish covenanter army – Scottish Presbyterians who, in 1638, had signed a covenant opposing attempts to impose English liturgical practice and church governance on Scotland. Charles’s English forces were unprepared, outnumbered, and easily defeated. A few days after the battle, the Scottish occupied Newcastle; Charles was forced to call a parliament – eventually to become known as the Long Parliament – in order to raise money to pay his
